


Together

by redcoatfollower



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Death, Non-Canonical Character Death, Paralysis, Post-Movie(s), Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 14:42:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5131400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcoatfollower/pseuds/redcoatfollower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max and Furiosa are attacked on a supply run. The outcome is unexpected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Together

His last thought was that they had died together. That was the important thing to remember.

* * *

 

When they booted Joe's body from the hood of the Gigahorse, everything changed. For the better, mostly. However, just because their quality of life was more palatable, didn't mean it was easier. A woman in charge, even one as strong and as respected as Furiosa, opened the new Citadel up to constant attacks. Some were futile attempts by unorganized mobs, others were damaging, exhausting, and fatal. The latter ones showed Furiosa who her real enemies were.

Max returned some 180 days later, dragging the deformed and charred remains of a vehicle behind a beat up pick-up truck that had seen better days. His car, Furiosa guessed. There was no reason he would waste the time otherwise. She was happy to see him, which was both surprising and not. They worked well together, but more importantly, they trusted each other. Trust wasn't easy to come by out here.

He helped her fight off attackers, and she let him salvage parts and work in the garages with little disturbance. In the end, the heart and soul of the car was his Interceptor, even if most of the replacement parts had been scavenged from what remained of the War Boys' own wrecks. She still spoke to him like she had never been destroyed. 

Furiosa and Max had agreed to go into the expanse for a supply run. Medical supplies were needed, and everyone was too terrified to leave the safety of the Citadel after the most recent attack. Too many were wounded, too many killed. So they went alone, no matter how foolish of an idea it was.

They drove a full day before the Raiders found them.

And they almost escaped. That is, until a trap full of explosives rocked the car off of its delicate axis and sent it skyward.

The car rolled several times, kicking up plumes of red dust that distorted the sky with each impact. The smell of broken metal, leaking oil, and gasoline hung heavily in the air. The dust rained to the ground and all that remained was the smoking remains of the battered Interceptor. The Raiders rode by, revving the unmuffled rumbles of their engines, and satisfied that the occupants were dead, rode off into the canyon.

It was hard to know which one of them came awake first, gasping air deep into their aching lungs. Max swung hard at nothing, knocking his fists against the side of the car, the steering wheel, the tattered leather seat. His vision cleared slowly and he processed where they had settled. A wedge of rock, a thin canyon carved naturally through the center, enveloped the sides of the car. The doors were crushed inward, bent from their frames, twisted into unusable openings.

The bottom panel of the driver’s door, Max noticed grimly, had broken and the twisted remnant now pinned his thigh against the steering wheel. The shard of steel had nestled itself through his pant leg and peered out from the other side, shiny and unpainted. There was surprisingly little blood, but the whiteness of his femur stretched outward from above his kneecap. He tested his range of motion and the pain, sudden and encompassing, snapped him almost immediately from consciousness.

Furiosa, at that same moment, was testing her own injuries. Her door was not as battered as Max's, but her side window had been shattered by the slab of rock. The solid mass unforgivably lay against the side of her throat. She swallowed hard and her chest tingled. She knew she was never leaving that car – at least not on her own power. In her assessment, she would never move again. Every nerve below her shoulders burned with misfires, and nothing reacted when she willed it to. A wave of claustrophobia rose up through her - the edges of the car, the edges of her paralyzed body, all crushing down on her. She passed out.

It was night when they finally spoke.

“I can’t move, Max.” Her voice was even, not daring to let him know how scared she was.

“What do you mean?” He turned his head to look at her, and he understood exactly what she meant. She was so stiff, so limp, her eyes the only thing that could manage to turn towards him. 

“Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt. But I am not going anywhere.” Her eyes began to burn, but she would not let the tears fall. “Are you injured?”

“My leg. I’m pinned to the car. The door is..uh..through it.” He gripped the edges of the metal and tried to push it through the clotted opening in his flesh. It didn’t move.

“We are not getting out of here, are we?” The desperation in her voice broke him. He had never heard that tone in her words before and it terrified him.

“We are going to try. Tomorrow, when it is light.”

They slept until the sun baked through the windshield. Furiosa kept her eyes closed so that she could imagine she was somewhere else, anywhere else. Her mind drifted to her childhood and she sat with the memories, vivid behind her eyelids.

Max struggled until his shirt was drenched in sweat. He pulled off his jacket and tossed it into the mess of a backseat. The pain drew down into it all his energy and his sanity. He fought with the metal until his hands were sliced and the smell of blood filled the air. Furiosa didn’t try to look at him, her ears burning with the sound of his exertion. She tasted vomit in her mouth but could not expel it.

He screamed when the metal ripped partially away from his leg, but still would not come free. He dropped into oblivion for so long Furiosa assumed he was dead.  

By the third day, they knew the thirst would kill them. Furiosa spent most of the day in and out of awareness; the time spent asleep blissful, the time spent awake filled with hallucinations. The pain from her broken neck (she assumed it was there), had retreated into the tingly half-numbness that the rest of her body felt.

Max's earlier attempt at escape had reactivated the bleeding from his leg, the thick liquid pooling below his foot in slow, red rivers. His mind danced between the real and the imaginary, and he called out to people he saw on the hood of the car. Nothing felt real anymore except for the thirst, and the pain, and the realization that his time on this wretched rock was drawing to a close. He worked his mouth but his throat only clicked dryly. It was enough to make her shift her eyes to him though. She looked at him for a long time, focusing on the line of thick stubble hidden by smudges of the desert. His skin was dry and it stretched across his protruding jaw bones tightly, almost tight enough that it seemed like it would tear from the tension. She frowned.

"This is where our story ends, Furiosa." When the words finally came, they were raspy, razor blades across his cracked, dry tongue.

"I know." She couldn't say much of anything else in response.

"I have a few bullets left. We don't have to wait." He had meant it to come out as a question, but his true feelings had betrayed him. They would be dead tomorrow, so why prolong the inevitable? No one was coming for them. The car had wedged itself out of view from almost every possible angle.  _Just you and me against the world, babe._

"You will have to do it for me." Furiosa shifted her eyes back to look out the windshield which was covered in a map of cracks from the accident. The desert wind, hot and irradiated, blew in througn the jagged openings. She tasted sand as she swallowed.

"I know."

They didn't say much more after that.

They sat in silence until the sky was painted with the brushstrokes of the sunset. When the first stars twinkled in the fading light, Max knew it was time.

His body felt slow and detached, as if he was the one who was paralyzed. The disconnect worried him. He had one last job to do and nothing could stop him. He owed this to her. Owed her a release from her prison. Not just the prison of the car, but the prison of her body, her thirst, this life. She deserved better than to die out here, shrieveled up like a common desert cur. She was a warrior, and warriors deserved to die by the bullet. The gun felt heavy, almost too heavy. His dehydrated muscles groaned when he lifted the automatic pistol onto his lap, breathing deeply, his body exhausted. He rolled his head weakly towards the passenger seat and reached out his hand to touch the fleshy fingers resting on her thigh.

"It's time Furiosa." His voice sounded distant and shaky.

He watched for a flicker of her eyes, but there was none. Instead, her answer came in a long streak of salty tears marking their path over her dusty cheek. Her shoulders trembled and he moved his hand there. She leaned into the touch, caught a whiff of his skin, all grease and sweat and life. Memories danced behind her eyes and she smiled. Just a little bit. She wanted so badly to look at him, but the grinding of bones stopped her. Instead, only her eyes could meet his; and they told him all the secrets of her world. He humbly accepted them.

"You won't hate me for this later, right?" He muttered, his right hand clutching the grip of the pistol. It was sticky and smeared with blood. The right thigh of his leather pants was soaked with the fluid, the sharp, stump of bone stark white against the inkiness of the sky. He feared there wasn't much time left.

"Of course not. You and I both knew we would end up here one day. Dying together, I mean." She paused, and her smile grew larger, brighter. "I just thought I would be the one killing you."

Without knowing when, Max realized he had been crying. His face was shiny with tears, but he still laughed in response. He touched her cheek, her jaw, the clotted gash above her right eye. Everything he could reach. Each time, another tear fell, until both their noses were thick with them. 

He muttered his apologies, like he had when he was stabbing life back through her ribs, like he had when he was transferring his blood into her. He swung the gun upwards, rotating his body as much as he could. The muzzle settled into her temple and he exhaled. He could sense the farewells on both their lips as he squeezed the trigger.

And then, she was gone.

Sobs caught in his lungs and his hands clutched at his face, smearing at the fresh warm spatters across his cheeks. He forced himself to look at her body, which was still upright, but had jerked to the left, enough that the knob of broken vertebrae was visible beneath the long line of her neck. He threw himself back against his seat and pounded his fists on the steering wheel until his knuckles swelled and bled. He screamed into the cabin of the car until his voice disappeared and his ears rung. He cried until there was nothing left to cry. 

There were voices behind him, familiar tones, but not the tones of the voices that haunted him. These were the voices of War Boys, their throats thick and weak from cancer.  _No. No. This was absolutely not happening._ It had to be a dream, a vision from the dehydration. He looked over at Furiosa, heard droplets of blood echoing onto the metal floor below. A rage like he had never known filled his chest and he refused to accept that he was about to be saved. 

Knocking came on the trunk, more voices, excited clamoring. And then he saw their ghostly faces standing out in the dark, and they began waving, and they started pulling at the broken doors. He heard a saw start to screech against the twisted metal, sparks illuminating the blackness.

_I'm coming, Furiosa._

The pistol was back in his hand. He had made a promise to her, to his partner in almost every way. It was too late to go back on that now. The nearest War Boy, seeing the gun in Max's hand, pounded against his window, shaking his head in horror. His fist broke through the glass, painting crimson across Max's already blood stained face. 

The painted white hand got to the gun too late. A split second before, the echoing shot finished it all.

 


End file.
